Breach podcast: Step 5, election hacking — announcing the wrong results

It’s easy to overlook, but perhaps the prime election hacking opportunity might also be the easiest – skip the James-Bond-esque vote-flipping efforts, and just hack a secretary of state’s website to cause confusion.

“We know that the Russians have hacked websites that announce election results in the past,” said Jake Braun, executive director of the University of Chicago Cyber Policy Initiative and organizer of the Voting Village project at hacker conference Def Con. “They did it in the Ukraine a few years back. I mean, can you imagine if it’s election night 2020, and they have to take the Florida and Ohio websites down because they’ve been hacked by Russia, and like Wolf Blitzer is losing his (mind) on CNN and Russian RT has announced that their preferred candidate won, who knows who that is, and then of course the fringe media starts running with it as if it’s real here in the United States. …How long would it take to unwind that? I mean it would make Bush v Gore in 2000 look like well-ordered democracy.”

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This makes me think of somebody who spent six hours making a wedding cake and drives it to the wedding and gets to the wedding and the second before they’re going to put it on the table, they trip and fall and the wedding cake splatters on the floor. That’s our election process.

—PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT–

JAKE:
Well, the most vulnerable part of the infrastructure is the websites that announce the results on
election day. Um, we know that the Russians have um hacked websites that announce election
results in the past. They did it in the Ukraine a few years back. I mean, can you imagine if it’s
election night 2020, and they have to take the Florida and Ohio websites down because they’ve
been hacked by Russia, and like Wolf Blitzer is losing his shit on CNN and Russian R.T. has
announced that their preferred candidate won, who knows who that is, and then of course the
fringe media starts running with it as if it’s real here in the United States. And then, I mean how
long would it take to unwind that? I mean it would make Bush v Gore in 2000 look like well
ordered democracy.
ALIA:
The election could be so secure every step along the way from point A to B to C to D to E, but
then this website, this one website with a blue background, just gets hacked.
BOB:
This makes me think of somebody who spent six hours making a wedding cake and drives it to
the wedding and gets to the wedding and the second before they’re going to put it on the table,
they trip and fall and the wedding cake splatters on the floor. That’s our election.

ALIA:
I’ve missed your metaphors, Bob. That’s a great metaphor. That’s exactly what it feels like. Then
there’s step six, which happens after the results are announced?